Review of International Studies (1999), 25, 329–342 Copyright © British International Studies Association

Harold Laski (1893–1950): political theorist of

a world in crisis
PETER LAMB

Harold Laski was a writer who exercised enormous influence in the turbulent
environment of the early to mid-twentieth century. Though normally regarded as a
political theorist, Laski frequently wrote on the problems of international politics.
Certainly, his work was fully engaged with world issues in the inter-war and post-war
periods. Like many critical and idealist thinkers of the time, he initially hoped that
the League of Nations would usher in a new, international democratic system. How-
ever his early hopes gave way to a more pessimistic (and more radical) perspective,
and from the late 1920s onwards he believed that the only way of transcending the
existing system of sovereign states was by moving beyond capitalism. Combining a
critique of both the Westphalian system and the market which he assumed
underpinned it, Laski raised major questions—relevant to his own times and to ours
too. Mainly ignored since his death, it is perhaps time that the work of this unduly
neglected figure should be revisited.

******

Laski was born in Manchester in 1893 to a wealthy Jewish family and grew up as a
child of active Liberal parents. As a pupil at the Manchester Grammar School, his
socialist convictions were shaped by the egalitarian High Master—John Louis
Paton. During his youth Laski also went on to repudiate Judaism, claiming that
reason prevented him from believing in God. In 1911, at the age of eighteen, he
alienated himself from his family by marrying Frida Kerry—a gentile nine years his
senior whose feminist ideas he embraced. Laski commenced his studies at Oxford
that year but achieved disappointing results in the sciences. This prompted him to
switch to History—in which he excelled. As a student he supported the radical guild
socialist movement and was active in the campaign for women’s suffrage. After
graduating with a First in 1914, he took up an invitation from George Lansbury to
write editorials for the Daily Herald.
At the outbreak of the First World War Laski tried to enlist for military service;
being ruled unfit he decided however to accept a position at McGill University in
Montreal. Two years later he met and impressed the future US Supreme Court
judge, Felix Frankfurter, at this time a professor of Law at Harvard. At the begin-
ning of a long-standing friendship, Frankfurter successfully campaigned for Laski
to be appointed to a position at Harvard where he remained until his return to
England. In 1916 Frankfurter also introduced him to the conservative Justice
Holmes of the Supreme Court. The two formed an unlikely friendship and remained
close until the death of Holmes in 1935.

329
330 Peter Lamb

It was during his time in the United States that Laski developed his critique of
state sovereignty. According to the young scholar the idea was, in essence, a fiction
whose primary purpose was to legitimate the power of vested interests by depicting
a false national unity. Considerable power, he argued, should be devolved to func-
tional and regional associations. As he acknowledged, these ideas were influenced by
F. W. Maitland and J. N. Figgis, who had earlier developed the English pluralist
doctrine. Another source of influence was the American pragmatic thinker John
Dewey, with whom he came into contact. Significantly in his first book Studies in the
Problem of Sovereignty, Laski claimed that his pluralism was ‘what Professor Dewey
calls “consistently experimentalist” in form and content’.
But Laski was no ivory tower academic, and in 1919 came out openly in support
of the Boston police strike, at a time when the president of Harvard was offering the
services of the University to the city. President Lowell faced threats from alumni to
withhold their donations unless Laski was dismissed; and while refusing to do so on
the grounds of academic freedom, he told Laski to make no more controversial
statements nor to expect promotion. Laski by this time was becoming increasingly
disillusioned with America anyway, and in 1920 decided to return to England—after
having accepted a post at the London School of Economics.
This was a particularly prolific period for Laski and in 1921 he published a
collection of his early essays: The Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays.
Though still critical of the state, as he became more active in the Labour Party and
the Fabian Society, he began to modify his views. But he was never a revolutionary,
fearing that revolution would only lead to dictatorship. Significantly perhaps he was
quite close to the liberal Alfred Zimmern who had recently been appointed to the
first Chair of International Relations in the University of Aberystwyth. Indeed,
after having visited the cosmopolitan Zimmern (who according to Laski must have
been something of a ‘mystery’ to the inhabitants of the small Welsh town) he wrote
to Holmes that he found himself ‘nine times out of ten in close agreement’ with the
ideas of the great classicist. ‘Together’, he went on, ‘we dismissed the League of
Nations’ and ‘agreed that every social panacea is the prelude to social disillusion’.
Laski’s A Grammar of Politics (published in 1925) witnessed a marked shift in his
thought: in this, one of his more influential works, he advocated a powerful role for
an enabling state under conditions of democracy. On global issues he argued that a
‘new political philosophy’ was ‘necessary’ for ‘a new world’ turned upside down by
war, revolution and advances in science. In the new world order—he opined—the
nation-state was fast losing its ability to act independently. Anticipating later
theories of globalization he claimed that the whole world was fast being reduced
politically and economically to ‘the unity of interdependence’. He used a striking
image to demonstrate his point. The ‘politicians of Tokyo’ he noted ‘make social
decisions not less momentous for New York than those of Chicago or Washington’.
The logical political corollary was that international well-being required common
agreement through international government. States, he believed, should be sub-
ordinate to ‘an authority in which each may have a voice, but in which, also, that
voice is never the self-determined source of decision’. Whatever form a decentralised
world-state might take there would be ‘no room for separate sovereignties’.
Given his outlook, it was hardly surprising that Laski began to adopt a more
positive attitude towards the League of Nations. The League he now felt constituted
a major step forward in international relations. In fact, for a while, he became quite
 Harold Laski (1893–1950): political theorist of a world in crisis 331

positively inclined towards the League (though was not unaware of the organiz-
ation’s deficiencies). For one so acute it is perhaps strange to read now his erroneous
prediction that the character of the League would ‘become increasingly obvious as
its functioning becomes more adequate’. Moreover, while believing that it was most
unlikely that the League would ‘become a State in the normal sense of the word’, he
believed—along with many others at the time—that it could be a source of principle,
propounding or accepting solutions to be administered by other bodies, ‘the ultimate
reserve force in society from which, in the last resort, definite action originates’.
In 1926 Laski was appointed to the influential Chair of Government at the
LSE—a post he would hold for the rest of his life. 1926 more generally represented a
cross-roads in Laski’s life. It was about this time for instance that he became more
critical of the League of Nations. This coincided with a visit he undertook to
Geneva to meet Zimmern, now a most ardent defender of the organization. ‘To a
sceptic’, he informed Holmes, Zimmern’s crusade for the League ‘does not help
discussion’. In a lecture he delivered during the trip, Laski expressed his dis-
satisfaction. The League he felt was incapable of making the necessary common
decisions on the basis of a rational assessment of the facts. What was required above
all was greater courage on the part of the League itself. To function effectively it also
had to make greater provision for the weaker states and extend more power to the
International Court to defend the individual against the state. But Laski did not give
up on the League entirely, and clung to the remote hope that it might still fulfil its
promise. However, this could only happen if individual nation-states would allow it
to encroach on their authority. If nation-states were left to act in ways they deemed
fit, conflict was inevitable. ‘We have’, he went on, ‘to find the concepts of cosmo-
politan thinking as the very basis of security for civilized existence’, a line he later
developed further in his lecture Nationalism and the Future of Civilization.
The year 1926 also saw a marked shift in Laski’s political views. The immediate
reason for this was the British General Strike in 1926 and its punitive aftermath.
Indeed, within a couple of years he was beginning to wonder whether any elected
government would be allowed to challenge the basic interests of the capitalist class.
This leftward evolution in his thought was later accelerated by the collapse of the
Labour Government in Britain in 1931. But in spite of this, and Laski’s more sym-
pathetic attitude towards Marxism (of which he had been quite critical in the early
1920s), he still supported the idea of peaceful rather than violent change. In the case
of Russia however he made an exception, and accepted that the Bolsheviks had
probably had no alternative but to act in the way they did in 1917. No simple-
minded apologist for the Soviet system, he nonetheless lavished praise on what he
saw as Soviet achievements; he also predicted (rather naively) that the vast socio-
economic changes then being experienced in the USSR would, in time, lead to
freedom.
If Laski was ambiguous about Stalinism (but expected the Soviet dictatorship to
be temporary) he was unreserved in his opposition to fascism; and like many at the
time, saw a very real connection between the fascist phenomenon and the economic
crisis. In his preface to the third edition of A Grammar of Politics in 1934 he claimed
that fascism was ‘simply the expedient adopted by capitalism in distress to defeat the
democratic foundation with which it could be successfully linked in its period of
expansion’. Capitalism and democracy, he now concluded, were becoming increas-
ingly incompatible. This theme was developed at length in several of his more
332 Peter Lamb

popular volumes: Democracy in Crisis; The State in Theory and Practice; The Rise of
European Liberalism; and Parliamentary Government in England. His work at this
stage betrayed the gloom of a writer who while passionately committed to
democracy, was afraid that capitalist reaction to a socialist parliamentary victory
would provoke revolutionary violence—a violence he not only deplored but felt had
little chance of success.
Opposition to violent change in Britain in large part explains why Laski remained
within the Labour Party. The mission he thought was not to join or create some-
thing else, but shift the party leftwards. With this in mind in 1932 he helped establish
the Socialist League, part of whose larger purpose was to persuade the leadership to
adopt a more radical programme. A keen supporter of left unity, he also sought to
ally Labour with the Communist Party. Though unsuccessful in this particular
venture, he did help establish the popular Left Book Club in 1936.
If Laski’s support for the politics of the Popular Front won him as many enemies
as it did friends, so too did his increasingly radical views on international affairs.
Even so, in 1933, Leonard Woolf decided to include Laski’s essay ‘The Economic
Foundations of Peace’ in a collection entitled The Intelligent Man’s Way to Prevent
War. While Woolf claimed that the various contributors to the book (Norman
Angell, Viscount Cecil and Gilbert Murray) were amongst some of the most
prominent men of their generation, he reserved a special mention for Laski. Laski’s
contribution he described as being the most controversial, though added for good
measure that its radical conclusions were not necessarily shared by all of the other
authors. In his essay Laski restated what he had said, and would say many times
again in his life: that the prospects for fundamental international reform were bleak
without radical measures to transcend capitalism; and that a new world order could
not be built until the configuration of economic power had been transformed. Nor
could the League do much to change things either. It was a noble idea perhaps, but
as an organization was unable to persuade states to surrender their sovereignty. The
whole dynamic of world politics he concluded was basically ‘fatal to the creative
functioning of the League of Nations’.
While Laski assumed (and wrote in The State in Theory and Practice in 1935) that
true international co-operation required the establishment of a society of socialist
states, he did not believe that all international problems would disappear as a result
of the death of capitalism. In the future world, war might still be waged. As he
noted in The Economic Foundations of Peace, socialism by itself would not eradicate
the nation state as the basic unit of political order. Nevertheless, under socialism it
was at least possible to establish the conditions of peace: capitalism as a system
made co-operation impossible and it was naïve to think otherwise. Moreover those
like Zimmern who assumed that an organization like the League could transcend the
logic of global conflict were simply tilting at windmills. As he argued in The State in
Theory and Practice, states were bound to promote the interests of the dominant
class, and until there was a fundamental change at the level of class relations inter-
national conflict, leading to war, was almost inevitable.
The relationship between war and economics stood at the heart of one of the great
debates in which Laski now became embroiled. According to Laski capitalism led to
expansion and expansion to war. Many agreed with him. Many of course did not,
and in a rerun of the old pre-war battle between Brailsford and Norman Angell,
Laski and other British intellectuals once again became involved in a bitter debate
 Harold Laski (1893–1950): political theorist of a world in crisis 333

about the precise relationship between capitalism and international relations. Initially
taking place in the letters pages of the New Statesman and Nation, the discussion was
subsequently published in booklet form in 1935 under the none-too-original title:
Does Capitalism Cause War? Proving the truth of the old adage that there was
nothing fundamentally new under the sun, Brailsford on the one side answered in the
positive, while Angell restated his old ‘interdependence’ thesis that war was bad for
business—a view with which Laski strongly disagreed. In the end, the only true
guarantee of peace he believed lay ‘through the reconstruction of the class relations
of modern society’. This alone ‘makes possible the abandonment of sovereignty in
that form which strikes at the root of peace’. As he noted in an appendix added to
the 1939 reprint of Nationalism and the Future of Civilization (published in his book
The Danger of Being a Gentleman and Other Essays), the ‘technical pivot upon which
our power to end aggression turns . . . is the abolition of sovereignty’. But this was
not enough in his view. To build a ‘new world order’ in the complete sense, it was
vital to reconfigure the internal order of each state as well as the boundaries between
them. Only then could humanity look forward to genuine security.
The coming of war not only confirmed Laski’s analysis (at least to his own
satisfaction) but also raised his hopes; and like others at the time he not only hoped
that the struggle against fascism would lead to radical reform at home, but to a
major restructuring of the international order as well. He was especially vocal in his
support for Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’ whose impact both upon himself and
the Labour Party was considerable. Though still critical of the United States, he
admired Roosevelt considerably. Indeed, even in the 1930s—when he saw little hope
for fundamental socio-economic reform in capitalist society—he applauded the
President’s attempt to regulate capitalism through the New Deal. A close student
of American politics, he was sensitive to the fact that the checks and
balances contained within the Constitution made it very difficult for politicians to
encroach on the interests of business. Nevertheless, he believed that a strong
democratically elected President, such as Roosevelt, could help reduce the power of
capital.
In spite of his admiration for Roosevelt, Laski wanted to deepen and extend the
New Deal; and in his The Old World and the New Society argued that Roosevelt’s
Four Freedoms could only be realised within the framework of a new society. He set
out these views in two important publications: The Machinery of International Relief
and Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time—both published in 1943. The central
claim in Reflections was that the Four Freedoms could only be implemented in a
planned society where there was neither unemployment nor poverty. Laski was also
sensitive to the world beyond Europe and argued that it was necessary to raise the
standards of life in the poorest areas of the world by expanding effective demand.
The objectives of the United Nations in war and peace, he concluded, were
‘incompatible with the maintenance of democracy on a capitalist foundation’.
Laski was much less clear about the institutional framework needed to create a
new international order. Like a number of thinkers at the time (Mitrany, Carr and
Woolf) Laski was not attracted to federal solutions; and in his book Where Do We
Go from Here (1940) advocated the pooling of sovereignties on a socialist basis. He
was uncertain though whether this should occur within the framework of an
organisation such as the League of Nations, by a linked series of regional systems of
states, or by the organisation of such a series within the world-wide body. It seems,
334 Peter Lamb

he suggested, ‘that the future form of world government is likely to be more complex
than the model of the League led us to imagine’. However, he was clear about one
thing: there could be no return to the anarchy of the inter-war system, and if the
war served any purpose it was to make sure that this never happened.
Laski’s argument that major reforms should be implemented before victory was
rejected by the Labour leadership, fearful that any move in that direction would lead
to the destruction of the war-time coalition. Laski made himself even more un-
popular by suggesting that if the Labour leader—Clement Attlee—attended the
Potsdam conference, he should do so as observer only; moreover that the party as a
whole should not be committed to any decision made there. Laski however con-
tinued to support the party and worked hard for its two victories in 1945 and 1950.
He strongly supported the decision to agree to India’s independence, and more
generally endorsed progressive measures at home. But he was never satisfied with the
pace of reform. In Trade Unions in the New Society (1949) he commended the
party’s nationalisation of key industries and services, the introduction of the
National Health Service, the system of social insurance, its substantial housing
programme, reduction in the powers of the House of Lords and the granting of
independence to a number of colonies. But he warned that unless capitalism was
transcended, a socialist government would be ‘always walking upon a razor’s edge’:
the government would be unable to use its coercive power ‘in such a way as to
outrage the vested interests’.
It was not Laski’s commitment to socialism, however, but his widely publicised—
and unsuccessful—libel action against several newspapers that damaged his repu-
tation immediately after the war. Accused by a number of his political enemies of
having advocated ‘violent revolution’ during the 1945 election campaign, he took his
accusers to court, justifiably complaining that he had argued for no such thing.
Unfortunately Laski was prevented from clarifying his position and he lost the case.
And though the lawyer for the defence—Sir Patrick Hastings—later agreed that
Laski had meant something different to that of which he had been accused, the trial
still did him some damage. Things were only made worse by a visit he made to the
Soviet Union on behalf of the Labour Party in 1946. In an increasingly tense world,
this ‘goodwill’ trip was readily seized upon by his detractors.
The post-war years were hugely disappointing ones for Laski. He was especially
critical of the new United Nations. Instead of challenging the existing configurations
of power within and between states, the UN, he argued, only confirmed both. ‘We
cannot rest content’, he stressed in The Crisis in Our Civilisation ‘until we have a
genuine world government expressing, through the direct choice of peoples, in a
parliament responsible to them, the will of the common folk, instead of being
dependent, like the United Nations, upon the sovereign wills of nation states which
express, in all vital matters, the purposes of their ruling classes and subordinate to
those purposes the interests of the common peoples’. Laski was equally critical of
the new post-war order. In his view the threat to world peace had merely assumed a
new form in the shape of a Cold War between the two superpowers. The expression
in the first instance of propaganda designed for purposes of domestic consumption,
the conflict was made worse in his view ‘by long memories of past threats and
mutual suspicions’. The Labour government, he advised, should not get drawn into
this maelstrom, but rather adopt a balanced approach in its relations with the US
and the Soviet Union. His plea fell on deaf ears.
 Harold Laski (1893–1950): political theorist of a world in crisis 335

Until his death in March 1950 Laski continued to insist that the post-war
international settlement could bring neither security nor freedom to the peoples of
the world. ‘If we assume’, he argued in 1948, ‘that the future of liberty depends
upon the realisation of those Four Freedoms upon which President Roosevelt laid
such eloquent emphasis, there is little reason to feel any certainty that the future of
liberty is secure. Grave economic crisis over most of the world makes freedom from
want an ideal that is bound to remain an empty one for long years to come. There
can be no freedom from fear while international rivalry is so tense, above all when
one, though only one, of the new weapons that may be used if that rivalry is allowed
to drift to war, is the atomic bomb’. Two years later, in his final (unfinished) manu-
script The Dilemma of Our Times he made much the same point. Victory could not
be devoted to great ends he observed whilst ‘two great combinations of nation-
states’ opposed one another in bitter ideological and military rivalry.
As much a political activist as public intellectual, Laski was an immensely
influential figure in his own lifetime. A force to be reckoned with inside the Labour
Party, Laski was also a vital force at the LSE where he shaped the views of hundreds
of students including C.B. Macpherson, Ralph Miliband and John Saville. In spite
of this, Laski’s work soon slipped into obscurity. There were several reasons why.
One of course was that his particular brand of normative political philosophy fell
out of favour in the conservative fifties. In an era when positivism was carrying all
before it, academics tended to shun what they termed ‘ideological’ or unscientific
thinking—especially the type of thinking associated with the name of Harold Laski.
Laski’s views also came under attack from within the Labour Party itself, and when
Anthony Crosland wrote in The Future of Socialism (1956) that Laski’s political
philosophy sounded ‘like an echo from another world’ there were few who jumped to
his defence. In the United States the situation was even grimmer. Here Laski was
attacked not just for being old hat but as a threat to the national security. It was
indeed in America that Herbert Deane shattered Laski’s reputation as a political
theorist. Deane’s study, The Political Ideas of Harold Laski (published in the mid-
1950s) portrayed Laski as an incoherent and contradictory writer; and largely as a
result of Deane’s efforts, the conventional assumption was forged that Laski’s work
was of little importance.
Laski’s work thus fell by the wayside—many would say justifiably so given his
uncompromising socialism and Leninist-style analysis of the relationship between
modern capitalism and global war. Yet Laski raised a series of questions—about
sovereignty and the ‘Westfailure’ system, about inequality and power, and the nature
of global governance—that are just as relevant today as they were back in the inter-
war period. Laski might indeed draw some satisfaction from the fact that with the
Cold War now over, a new generation of students are once again looking at the same
sort of issues he was examining fifty years earlier. The possibility that they might not
come up with identical answers is perhaps less important than that they are once
again asking similar questions.
336 Peter Lamb

Bibliography

This is not a complete bibliography of Laski’s published writings. It does, however,

include his books, his major pamphlets and articles, and many of his other
publications.

(1915) ‘The Means and the End’, The New Republic, 4, 4 September.
(1915) ‘The Personality of the State’, The Nation, 101, 22 July.
(1916) ‘The Apotheosis of the State’, The New Republic, 7, 22 July.
(1916) ‘The Basis of Vicarious Liability’, The Yale Law Journal, December.
(1916) ‘Notes on the Strict Interpretation of Ecclesiastical Trusts’, The Canadian
Law Times, 36.
(1916) ‘The Personality of Associations’, Harvard Law Review, 29.
(1917) Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (New Haven: Yale University Press;
London: Humphrey Milton).
(1917) ‘A Note on M. Duguit’, Harvard Law Review, 31.
(1918) ‘The Problem of Administrative Areas’, Smith College Studies in History, 4 (1).
(1919) Authority in the Modern State (New Haven: Yale University Press; London:
Oxford University Press).
(1919) ‘The Pluralistic State’, Philosophical Review, 28, November.
(1919) ‘British Labor Reconstruction Proposals and the American Labor Attitude’,
Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 8, February.
(1919) ‘The Theory of Popular Sovereignty’, Michigan Law Review, 17, January.
(1919) ‘Introduction’, in L. Duguit, Law in the Modern State (New York: Huebsch)
(also London: George Allen and Unwin, 1921).
(1920) Political Thought in England: Locke to Bentham (London: Williams and
Norgate; New York: Henry Holt and Co.).
(1920) ‘Guild Socialism and the State’, The New Republic, 23, 30 June.
(1920) ‘Parliament and Revolution’, The New Republic, 22, 19 May.
(1920) ‘Democracy at the Crossroads’, The Yale Review, 9, July.
(1920) ‘The Temper of the Present Time’, The New Republic, 21, 18 February.
(1920) ‘British Labor and Direct Action’, The Nation, 111, 11 September.
(1921) The Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Co.) (also London: George Allen and Unwin, 1922).
(1921) ‘Recent Contributions to Political Science’, Economica, 1 (1).
(1921) (With R.H. Tawney) ‘Introduction’, in Viscount Haldane, The Problem of
Nationalization (London: George Allen and Unwin/Labour Publishing Co.).
(1922) Karl Marx: An Essay (London: Fabian Society/George Allen and Unwin)
(also New York: League for Industrial Democracy, 1933).
(1922) The State in the New Social Order (London: Fabian Society).
(1922) ‘The Civil Service and Parliament’, in Lord Haldane et al., The Development
of the Civil Service: Lectures Delivered Before the Society of Civil Servants,
1920–1921 (London: P.S. King and Son).
(1922) ‘Introduction’, in Letters of Edmund Burke: A Selection (London: Humphrey
Milford).
(1923) ‘Lenin and Mussolini’, Foreign Affairs, 2, September.
 Harold Laski (1893–1950): political theorist of a world in crisis 337

(1923) ‘Knowledge as Civil Discipline’, in O. Stanley (ed.), The Way Out: Essays on
the Meaning and Purpose of Adult Education (London: Oxford University
Press).
(1924) The Position of Parties and the Right of Dissolution (London: Fabian
Society).
(1924) ‘Introduction’, in J.S. Mill, Autobiography (London: Humphrey Milford).
(1924) ‘Introduction’, in J. Brutus, A Defence of Liberty against Tyrants (London:
Bell and Sons).
(1925) A Grammar of Politics (London: George Allen and Unwin; New Haven: Yale
University Press).
(1925) Socialism and Freedom (London: Fabian Society).
(1925) The Problem of a Second Chamber (London: Fabian Society).
(1925) ‘English Politics Today’, The New Republic, 43, 8 July.
(1925) ‘Political Science in Great Britain’, American Political Science Review, 14,
February.
(1926) On the Study of Politics (London: Humphrey Milford).
(1926) ‘The British General Strike’, The Nation, 122, 16 June.
(1926) ‘The General Strike and the Constitution’, Labour Magazine, 5 July.
(1927) Communism (London: Williams and Norgate; New York: Henry Holt and Co.).
(1927) (With E.J.P. Benn) The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Bill (London: P.S.
King and Son).
(1927) ‘Present Tendencies in British Politics’, The New Republic, 51, 13 July.
(1927) ‘International Government and National Sovereignty’, in Geneva Institute of
International Relations (ed.), Problems of Peace (London: Oxford University
Press).
(1927) ‘Introductory Essay’, in Sir Henry Taylor, The Statesman (Cambridge: W.
Heffer and Sons).
(1927) ‘Supplementary Notes and Appendices’, in G.P. Gooch, English Democratic
Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).
(1928) The British Cabinet: A Study of Its Personnel 1801–1924 (London: Fabian
Society).
(1928) The Recovery of Citizenship (London: Ernest Benn).
(1928) ‘The Value and Defects of the Marxist Philosophy’, Current History, 29,
October.
(1928) ‘The Present Evolution of the Parliamentary System’, in H.J. Laski et al.,
The Development of the Representative System in Our Times (Lausanne:
Payot et Cie).
(1928) ‘Bosanquet’s Theory of the General Will’, Mind, Matter and Purpose:
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary 8.
(1929) ‘England in 1929’, The Yale Review, 18, March.
(1929) ‘The New Test for British Labour’, Foreign Affairs, 8, October.
(1929) ‘Law and the State’, Economica, 9 (27).
(1930) Liberty in the Modern State (London: Faber and Faber: New York: Harper
and Bros.).
(1930) A Grammar of Politics, 2nd edn. (London: George Allen and Unwin) (also
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931).
(1930) The Dangers of Obedience and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Bros.).
338 Peter Lamb

(1930) The Socialist Tradition in the French Revolution (London: Fabian

Society/George Allen and Unwin).
(1930) Justice and the Law (London: The Ethical Union).
(1930) ‘The Prospects of Constitutional Government’, The Political Quarterly, 1,
July-September.
(1930) ‘Aristocracy Still the Ruling Class in England’, Current History, 32, July.
(1930) ‘The Rise of Liberalism’, in E.R.A. Seligman (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan).
(1931) An Introduction to Politics (London: George Allen and Unwin). This was
also published as Politics (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1934).
(1931) The Limitations of the Expert (London: Fabian Society).
(1931) (With J. Redlich) The Decline of Parliamentary Government (New York:
Foreign Policy Association).
(1931) ‘Democracy’, in E.R.A. Seligman (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences,
Vol. 5 (London: Macmillan).
(1931) ‘Freedom of Association’, in E.R.A. Seligman (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences, Vol. 5 (London: Macmillan).
(1931) ‘Communism as a World Force’, International Affairs, 10, January.
(1931) ‘Some Implications of the Crisis’, The Political Quarterly, 2, October-
December.
(1931) ‘The Political Philosophy of Mr Justice Holmes’, Yale Law Journal, 40 (5).
(1931) ‘The Mother of Parliaments’, Foreign Affairs, 9, July.
(1932) Studies in Law and Politics (London: George Allen and Unwin; New Haven:
Yale University Press).
(1932) The Crisis and the Constitution: 1931 and After (London: L. and V. Woolf at
the Hogarth Press).
(1932) Nationalism and the Future of Civilization (London: Watts and Co.).
(1932) ‘The Position and Prospects of Communism’, Foreign Affairs, 11, October.
(1932) ‘What will Mr. Roosevelt Mean to Europe?’, Labour Magazine, 11 (8).
(1932) ‘The Theory of an International Society’, in Geneva Institute of
International Relations (ed.), Problems of Peace (London: George Allen and
Unwin).
(1932) ‘India at the Crossroads’, The Yale Review, 21, March.
(1932) ‘Robert Peel’, in H.J. and H. Massingham (eds.), The Great Victorians
(London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson).
(1933) Democracy in Crisis (London: George Allen and Unwin; Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press).
(1933) Democracy at the Crossroads (London: National Council of Labour
Colleges).
(1933) The Labour Party and the Constitution (London: Socialist League).
(1933) ‘The Economic Foundations of Peace’, in L. Woolf (ed.), The Intelligent
Man’s Way to Prevent War (London: Gollancz).
(1933) ‘Liberty’, in E.R.A. Seligman (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol.
9 (London: Macmillan).
(1933) ‘The Price of Freedom’, The Daily Herald, 27 May.
(1933) ‘Marxism After Fifty Years’, Current History, 37, March.
(1933) ‘The Present Position of Representative Democracy’, in H.J. Laski et al.,
Where Stands Socialism Today? (London: Rich and Cowan).
 Harold Laski (1893–1950): political theorist of a world in crisis 339

(1933) ‘President Roosevelt and Foreign Opinion’, The Yale Review, 22, June.
(1933) ‘Little Hope in Roosevelt’, The Daily Herald, 6 May.
(1933) ‘The Élite in a Democratic Society: What is Its Function?’, Harpers
Magazine, 167, September.
(1933) ‘M. Duguit’s Conception of the State’, in A.L. Goodhart et al., Modern
Theories of Law (London: Oxford University Press).
(1934) A Grammar of Politics, 3rd edn. (London: George Allen and Unwin).
(1934) ‘The Roosevelt Experiment’, The Atlantic Monthly, 153, February.
(1934) ‘Freedom in Danger’, The Yale Review, 23, March.
(1934) ‘A Leningrad Letter’, The Nation, 139, 18 and 25 July.
(1934) ‘The Fabian Way’, Current History, 41, October.
(1934) ‘The Underlying Assumptions of the National Government’, The Political
Quarterly, 5, January-March.
(1935) The State in Theory and Practice (London: George Allen and Unwin; New
York: Viking Press).
(1935) Law and Justice in Soviet Russia (London: L. and V. Woolf at the Hogarth
Press).
(1935) ‘What is Vital in Democracy?’, Survey Graphic, 24, April.
(1935) ‘The Committee System in Local Government’, in H.J. Laski et al., A
Century of Municipal Progress (London: Allen).
(1935) ‘Communism Faces the Wrath to Come’, The New Republic, 84, 30 October.
(1935) ‘Discretionary Power’, Politica, 1 (3).
(1935) ‘Does Capitalism Cause War?, in H. Brinton (ed.), Does Capitalism Cause
War? (London: H. and E.R. Brinton).
(1935) ‘A Key to Communism’, The New Statesman and Nation, 10, 20 July.
(1935) ‘Lloyd George’s New Deal’, The Nation, 140, 20 February.
(1935) ‘Hitler Over England’, The Nation, 140, 5 June.
(1935) ‘A Word to the Republicans: The Duty of an Opposition Party’, Harpers
Magazine, 171, October.
(1935) ‘The Decline of the Professions’, Harpers Magazine, 171, November.
(1936) The Rise of European Liberalism (London: George Allen and Unwin; New
York: Harper and Bros.).
(1936) ‘Problems of Labour Policy’, The Labour Monthly, 18, March.
(1936) ‘On the Strategy of Socialism’, Left Book News, September.
(1936) ‘The Labour Party Conference at Edinburgh’, The Labour Monthly, 18,
November.
(1936) ‘A Discussion at Edinburgh’, The Labour Monthly, 18, December.
(1936) ‘Review of “Under the Axe of Fascism” by Professor Salvemini’, The Left
Book News, October.
(1936) ‘Review of “The Theory and Practice of Socialism” by John Strachey’, The
Left Book News, November.
(1936) ‘The General Election, 1935’, The Political Quarterly, 7, January-March.
(1936) ‘The Constitution Under Strain’, The Political Quarterly, 7.
(1936) ‘Political Theory and the Social Sciences’, in Institute of Sociology and the
International Student Service (British Committee) (ed.), The Social Sciences:
Their Relation in Theory and Practice (London: Play House Press).
(1936) ‘The Judicial Function’, Politica, 2 (6).
340 Peter Lamb

(1936) ‘Political Theory in the Later Middle Ages’, in J.B. Bury (ed.), The Cambridge
Medieval History, vol. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
(1936) ‘Review of “World Politics, 1918–1936” by R. Palme Dutt’, Left Book News,
July.
(1937) Liberty in the Modern State, 2nd edn. (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
(1937) ‘Foreword’, in R.A. Brady, The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism
(London: Gollancz).
(1937) ‘Unity and the Labour Party’, The Labour Monthly, 19, March.
(1937) ‘A Formula For Conservatives’, Harpers Magazine, 175, September.
(1937) ‘Review of “The People’s Front” by G.D.H. Cole’, The Left News, July.
(1937) ‘The Labour Party and the Left Book Club’, The Left News, August.
(1938) A Grammar of Politics, 4th edn. (London: George Allen and Unwin; New
Haven: Yale University Press). This edition contains his important
introductory chapter The Crisis in the Theory of the State.
(1938) Parliamentary Government in England (London: George Allen and Unwin;
New York: Viking Press).
(1938) ‘China and Democracy’, in E.R. Hughes (ed.), China: Body and Soul
(London: Secker and Warburg).
(1938) ‘The Outlook for Civil Liberties’, in B. Russell et al., Dare We Look Ahead?
(London: George Allen and Unwin).
(1938) ‘The Prospects of Peace in Europe’, in B. Rowntree et al., Wharton Assembly
Addresses (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
(1938) ‘The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt’, University of
Chicago Law Review, 6, December.
(1938) ‘The Colonial Civil Service’, The Political Quarterly, 9.
(1938) ‘Review of “Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation” by S. and B. Webb’,
The Political Quarterly, 9.
(1939) Introduction to Contemporary Politics: Selected Lectures by Harold J. Laski
(Seattle: University of Washington Bookstore).
(1939) The Danger of Being a Gentleman and Other Essays (London: George Allen
and Unwin) (also New York: Viking Press, 1940).
(1939) ‘The Obsolescence of Federalism’, The New Republic, 98, 3 May.
(1939) ‘The Challenge of Our Times’, The American Scholar, 8, Autumn.
(1939) ‘The War’, The Left News, December.
(1940) Where Do We Go from Here? (Harmondsworth; Penguin; New York: Viking
Press).
(1940) The American Presidency: An Interpretation (London: George Allen and
Unwin; New York: Viking Press).
(1940) The Rights of Man (London: Macmillan and Co.).
(1940) The Decline of Liberalism (London: Oxford University Press).
(1940) ‘The War and the Future’, in C. Attlee, et al., Labour’s Aims in War and
Peace (London: Lincolns Prager).
(1940) ‘Is This an Imperialist War?’, in C. Attlee et al., Labour’s Aims in War and
Peace (London: Lincolns Prager).
(1940) ‘The Way to a Socialist Victory’, Left Book News, September.
(1940) ‘I Believe’, in W.H. Auden et al., I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of
Twenty-Three Eminent Men and Women of our Time (London: George Allen
and Unwin).
 Harold Laski (1893–1950): political theorist of a world in crisis 341

(1940) ‘Government in Wartime’ in H.J. Laski et al., Where Stands Democracy?

(London: Macmillan and Co.).
(1940) ‘The Climate of Intellectual Freedom’, The Left News, March.
(1941) The Strategy of Freedom: An Open Letter to Students, Especially American
(New York: Harper and Bros.) (also London: George Allen and Unwin, 1942).
(1941) Freedom of the Press in Wartime (London: National Council for Civil
Liberties).
(1941) The Germans—Are They Human? A Reply to Sir Robert Vansittart (London:
Gollancz).
(1941) ‘Preface’, in V. Gollancz (ed.), The Betrayal of the Left (London: Gollancz).
(1941) ‘Revolution by Consent’, The Nation, 152, 22 March.
(1941) ‘The Need for a European Revolution’, in H.J. Laski et al., Programme for
Victory (London: Labour Book Service).
(1941) ‘British Communists Help Hitler’, The Nation, 152, 15 February.
(1942) ‘Democracy in War Time’, in G.D.H. Cole, et al., Victory or Vested Interest?
(London: The Labour Book Service).
(1942) ‘Epitaph on a System’, The New Statesman and Nation, 24, 11 July.
(1942) ‘Some Reflections on Government in Wartime’, The Political Quarterly, 13,
January-March.
(1942) ‘Introduction’, in J.P.W. Mallalieu, Passed to You Please: Britain’s Red Tape
Machine at War (London: Gollancz).
(1942) (Labour Party Report drafted anonymously by Laski) The Old World and the
New Society (London: Labour Party)
(1943) Reflections on the Revolution of our Time (London: George Allen and Unwin;
New York: Viking Press).
(1943) Marx and Today (London: Gollancz/Fabian Society).
(1943) London, Washington, Moscow: Partners in Peace? (London: National Peace
Council).
(1943) ‘An Age of Transition’, The Political Quarterly, 14, April-June.
(1943) ‘The Economic Foundations of Fascism’, The New Statesman and Nation,
25, 27 March.
(1943) ‘Introduction’, in L. Lévy, France is a Democracy (London: Gollancz).
(1943) ‘Choosing the Planners’, in G.D.H. Cole et al., Plan for Britain (London:
Labour Book Service).
(1943) ‘The Machinery of International Relief’, in L. Woolf et al., When Hostilities
Cease (London: Gollancz).
(1944) Will Planning Restrict Freedom? (Cheam: Architectural Press).
(1944) Faith Reason and Civilisation (London: Gollancz; New York: Viking Press).
(1944) Will the Peace Last? (London: National Peace Council).
(1944) ‘The Parliamentary and Presidential Systems’, Public Administration Review,
4 (4).
(1946) The Secret Battalion: An Examination of the Communist Attitude to the
Labour Party (London: Labour Party).
(1946) ‘Civil Liberties in the Soviet Union’, The New Republic, 115, 21 October.
(1946) ‘Palestine: the Economic Aspect’, in J.B. Hobman (ed.), Palestine’s Economic
Future (London: Percy Lund Humphries).
(1946) ‘Wanted: A New Constitution’, Tribune, 28 June.
(1946) ‘What Democracy Means in Russia’, The New Republic, 115, 28 October.
342 Peter Lamb

(1947) Russia and the West: Policy for Britain (London: National Peace Council).
(1947) The Webbs and Soviet Communism (London: Fabian Publications).
(1947) ‘The Crisis in Our Civilization’, Foreign Affairs, 26, October.
(1947) ‘A Socialist Looks at the Cold War’, The New Republic, 117, 27 October.
(1947) ‘Why Does Russia Act That Way?’, The Nation, 164, 1 March.
(1947) ‘Foreword’, in L.S. Woolf, Foreign Policy (London: Fabian Society)
(1948) Liberty in the Modern State, 3rd edn. (London: George Allen and Unwin)
(also New York: Viking Press, 1949).
(1948) The American Democracy A Commentary and an Interpretation (New York:
Viking Press) (also London: George Allen and Unwin, 1949).
(1948) Communist Manifesto: Socialist Landmark (London: George Allen and
Unwin).
(1948) ‘What Socialism Means to Me’, Labour Forum, 1, January-March.
(1948) ‘Efficiency in Government’, in D. Jay et al., The Road to Recovery (London:
Allan Wingate).
(1948) ‘Getting on with Russia’, The Nation, 166, 10 January.
(1948) ‘Towards a Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, in UNESCO (ed.),
Human Rights: Comments and Interpretations (London: Allan Wingate) (also
New York: Columbia University Press, 1949).
(1948) ‘Morris Cohen’s Approach to Legal Philosophy’, The University of Chicago
Law Review, 15.
(1949) Trade Unions in the New Society (New York: Viking Press) (also London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1950).
(1949) Socialism as Internationalism (London: Gollancz).
(1949) ‘America, Good and Bad’, The Nation, 169, 2 July.
(1949) ‘The American President and Foreign Relations’, The Journal of Politics, 11
(1).
(1949) ‘State, Worker, and Technician’, in G. Gurvitch (ed.), Industrialisation et
technocratie (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin).
(1949) ‘The Leaders of Collectivist Thought’, in H. Grisewood et al., Ideas and
Beliefs of the Victorians (London: Sylvan Press) (also New York: E.P. Dutton
and Co., 1966).
(1949) ‘Fabian Socialism’, in H. Grisewood et al., Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians
(London: Sylvan Press) (also New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1966).
(1950) ‘The First Fifty Years’, The Nation, 170, 25 February.
(1951) Reflections on the Constitution: The House of Commons, the Cabinet, the Civil
Service (Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Viking Press).
(1952) The Dilemma of Our Times (London: George Allen and Unwin).
(1953) M.D. Howe (ed.), Holmes-Laski Letters: The Correspondence of Mr Justice
Holmes and Harold J. Laski (Two Volumes) (London: Oxford University
Press).